I said "elicit," not elucidate. Elicit, as in to draw out. I don't believe you even know what position(s) you hold, in order to elucidate them.



Hopefully you can see, from your own illustration here, why I so dislike analogies. A person who holds a different intellectual position from your own is not an "enemy" who must be "targeted" and "shot." In fact, the popular adoption in the political arena of this exact mentality is why this country is in the mess it is.



The most appropriate of which being: "That kid sitting in the supply room watching Rambo movies doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about."



Okay... The recent collapse of an ancient gladiator house near Pompeii, and Bristol Palin on Dancing With The Stars... GO! FREEDOM DEPENDS ON THIS!



So you're saying you don't approve of profiling people based on their appearing to be Muslim? Or Mexican?



I didn't lose an election. I didn't run for anything.



I have no problem with your boss being centrist. I have a problem with people claiming he's leftist.



How to safely disassemble the monster BushJr and Cheney created? You're right, I absolutely know nothing about that. However, I support the president enough that he'll figure out how to.



If you had something other than your "whatever it is, I oppose it" rhetoric, you might be able to finally elicit from within yourself a cogent argument.

That’s pretty much it, but “carefully constructed lies” implies someone who is willfully lying, and has expended the effort to carefully construct the lie, a Prime Cause. Also it implies someone with the judgment to distinguish between careful construction and slapdash throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks. It implies a much higher level of consciousness than the rest of the definition for “doublethink”.

You can’t build a bridge or a political movement or a family business without the level of consciousness that can sustain deliberate action over an extended period of time, and that level of consciousness cannot exist if inconvenient truths are to be so easily dismissed. Is “democracy” a carefully-constructed lie? A lot of people have worked really hard on exactly that idea for a long time, taking it into account in good times and bad and applying it as often as possible. Is God telling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac [if you’re Jewish] or Ishmael [if you’re Muslim] a carefully constructed lie? Is Marvel by Stan and Jack and Steve a carefully constructed lie? Is Obama’s health care reform a carefully constructed lie? Well, no, it obviously wasn’t built very carefully, but you see what I mean.

Way to change the subject.



In America, I'd say yes, when you consider we don't have a democracy, but rather a respresentative form of government, the representatives supposedly speaking for a majority of the populace. That system can be gamed, however, as we have seen many times.



You give away your position when you show your muzzle fire.

[quoteI don't believe you even know what position(s) you hold, in order to elucidate them.[/quote]

You mean like whether or not I think we’re at war with extremist Islam? I’m pretty sure I’ve been clear on that over the last nine years. I’m also pretty sure I’ve been clear that they’re at war with us, and have been at it a lot longer.



Says the guy who still brags about chasing Erik Larsen away from this messageboard. And isn’t there a recent thread topside where you and your internet buddies are all laughing about all the “enemies” you “targeted” and “shot” for intruding on “your turf”.



Same for the messageboard. But dammit, you knew conclusively that Erik Larsen had his Byrne and Miller comics open to swipe from on the latest issue of “Savage Dragon”, and you weren’t going to let him forget it. That’s the attitude you and many who agree with you bring to the public arena, whatever the topic of conversation. It’s a Stalinist mentality, and can produce accusations of “Trotskyism” wherever it surfaces. Juan Williams found out how many people will defend you if you get accused of having Trotskyist sympathies, no matter how vehemently you proclaim your opposition to Trotsky.

Practicing what you preach is a good thing, and in a sustained effort over time and a range of activities, people can judge how well individuals and groups perform. “It doesn’t matter what you say if people will just accuse you of racism anyway.”



“There are no atheists in foxholes.”



Abdulmutallab, Faisal Shazad, Major Hassan, al-Awlaki, Molly Norris. I win.



The same President that operates Guantanamo Bay and uses all the Patriot Act accoutrement – wiretaps, option for rendition, state secrets, executive privilege, and fires Predator drones into more countries that didn’t attack us on 9/11 than GWB ever dreamed of. He not been remotely challenged by his supposed-supporters who were filling the streets a few short years ago with Hitler signs. President Clinton failing to kill bin Laden via missles the way Obama is killing random Pakistanis or Yemenis or Somalis, and that’s a good thing completely unrelated to Darth Cheney’s monster.

That President is the one you support enough that he’ll figure out how to fix it. Have I got that?

Ok, what in his career prior to being elected President or after he was elected President has led you to put this sort of belief on his shoulders with confidence that he will leave the situation better than he found it?

The oil spill? Going on tv and saying Abdulmutallab was an isolated incident? The beer summit? The Ground Zero mosque? Expanding COIN in Afghanistan? His stance on gay marriage?

Help me out here, what has he done that wouldn’t be a target for every bit of venom you could summon if GWB had done it? What has he done, other than be elected President, to conclusively demonstrate that he is capable of doing anything? Why burden him with your unrealistic expectations?



Just because you don’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

That's probably because any time someone in a foxhole mentions that he's an atheist, all the Christians in the foxhole threaten to kill him.

Well, first off, if you think you're at war with an ideal, you're an idiot. Second, the "jihad" extremists are at war with what they consider to be the opposing ideal (which is not just the US), and they are idiots.



You're going to have to be a little more specific, as I've no idea what you're on about.



Nope. Never said that. I said it was obvious he'd traced and/or copied from Byrne in his formative years and has not been able to shake that influence. You would understand this if you knew how to read.



I'm not sure why you have this problem with staying on one topic. Williams was fishing for higher pay at Fox and more face time elsewhere. End of story.



And we were talking about racism, weren't we.



What is it you've won exactly? The Most Obtuse Dumbass Award? Either say what you think should have been done to prevent any of those people from becoming known quantities, or shut up.



Blame Clinton. Then you get upset when anybody blames BushJr for anything. How long did Clinton have to do anything about bin Laden? The Cole was bombed in October. The election was in November. The country was collectively biting its nails over having no president-elect because the Bush Brothers ran their shenanigans for a month or so. That was pretty much the end of Clinton's term. Then BushJr's people threw out Clinton's playbook on Al-Qaida. If you're going to point fingers, point at the actual person(s) responsible.



Because he thinks with his brain and not his "gut," unlike his predecessor.



Oh, I realize there's something there. I just want you to say what you mean instead of dancing around to forty different unrelated topics to try and obfuscate your very clichéd positions.

I think Chris must be referring to the Erik Larsen World Record Holder thread in the News Announcements Gossip forum.

But, Chris, aren't all the non-Gutters forums "topside," is that not right? We're in a topside thread right now. If you just meant "higher up the list," I guess that's clear enough. You weren't implying that this was a thread for Gutters behavior, I hope?

Also, in that Erik Larsen thread, I think it was pretty clear that most of us were regretting the people who had been "driven away" from Comicon, although we were laughing about it a little too. I don't think that anybody was being targeted, with the one exception of Allen targeting Larsen. In most cases, it was all just good-natured ribbing, or at worst our usual bareknuckled open discussions, which a number of former members objected to for one reason or another. But I don't think anyone was being labelled an enemy.

Right, the enemies have all been driven away. PAD and Tony Isabella and the rest have all been taught a lesson about posting here. If John Byrne announced his retirement, this board would be dead.

Of course the tone is jocular ["we've always been jocular, we HAVE to be jocular!"] the ones who win the turf wars usually are. If one of them chose to write up their impression of Karl Rove and Rupert Murdoch's strategy sessions, it would read basically like the tone of that Erik Larsen thread.

Of course Alan stops being jocular when someone makes an analogy to a gun battle. Then he gets scared and starts to cry and pretends he doesn't understand anything.

Oh, I'll probably get to the rest of Allen's post later, but as to his denial:

http://comicon.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=559603&page=4

Notice how similar his tone is to this thread where he assumes with no evidence whatsoever that my first response is "kill 'em all." That's what he brings to the table, whatever the topic of conversation.

I really don't.

I understand analogies just fine. I just don't like them. They always break down into parallels unintended, often ironic. These are my feelings on all analogies, not just your impotent stockboy fantasies of gunplay.